Entire PG Edition of The Works of William Dean Howells by William Dean Howells

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It had been made out for three thousand pounds, in Clementina's name aswell as her own; but she had lived wastefully since she had come abroad,and little money remained to be taken up. With the letter Clementinahanded the vice-consul the roll of Italian and Austrian bank-notes whichshe had drawn when Mrs. Lander decided to leave Venice; they were to theamount of several thousand lire and golden. She offered them with theinsensibility to the quality of money which so many women have, and whichis always so astonishing to men. "What must I do with these?" she asked.

"Why, keep them! returned the vice-consul on the spur of his surprise.

"I don't know as I should have any right to," said Clementina. "Theywere hers."

"Why, but"--The vice-consul began his protest, but he could not end itlogically, and he did not end it at all. He insisted with Clementinathat she had a right to some money which Mrs. Lander had given her duringher life; he took charge of the bank-notes in the interest of thepossible heirs, and gave her his receipt for them. In the meantime hefelt that he ought to ask her what she expected to do.

"I think," she said, "I will stay in Venice awhile."

The vice-consul suppressed any surprise he might have felt at a decisiongiven with mystifying cheerfulness. He answered, Well, that was right;and for the second time he asked her if there was anything he could dofor her.

"Why, yes," she returned. "I should like to stay on in the house here,if you could speak for me to the padrone."

"I don't see why you shouldn't, if we can make the padrone understandit's different."

"You mean about the price?" The vice-consul nodded. "That's what I wantyou should speak to him about, Mr. Bennam, if you would. Tell him that Ihaven't got but a little money now, and he would have to make it veryreasonable. That is, if you think it would be right for me to stay, aftathe way he tried to treat Mrs. Lander."

The vice-consul gave the point some thought, and decided that theattempted extortion need not make any difference with Clementina, if shecould get the right terms. He said he did not believe the padrone was abad fellow, but he liked to take advantage of a stranger when he could;we all did. When he came to talk with him he found him a man of heart ifnot of conscience. He entered into the case with the prompt intelligenceand vivid sympathy of his race, and he made it easy for Clementina tostay till she had heard from her friends in America. For himself and forhis wife, he professed that she could not stay too long, and theyproposed that if it would content the signorina still further they wouldemploy Maddalena as chambermaid till she wished to return to Florence;she had offered to remain if the signorina stayed.

"Then that is settled," said Clementina with a sigh of relief; and shethanked the vice-consul for his offer to write to the Milrays for her,and said that she would rather write herself.

She meant to write as soon as she heard from Mr. Hinkle, which could notbe long now, for then she could be independent of the offers of helpwhich she dreaded from Miss Milray, even more than from Mrs. Milray; itwould be harder to refuse them; and she entered upon a passage of herlife which a nature less simple would have found much more trying. Butshe had the power of taking everything as if it were as much to beexpected as anything else. If nothing at all happened she accepted thesituation with implicit resignation, and with a gayety of heart whichavailed her long, and never wholly left her.

While the suspense lasted she could not write home as frankly as before,and she sent off letters to Middlemount which treated of her delay inVenice with helpless reticence. They would have set another sort ofhousehold intolerably wondering and suspecting, but she had the comfortof knowing that her father would probably settle the whole matter bysaying that she would tell what she meant when she got round to it; andapart from this she had mainly the comfort of the vice-consul's society.He had little to do besides looking after her, and he employed himselfabout this in daily visits which the padrone and his wife regarded asofficial, and promoted with a serious respect for the vice-consulardignity. If the visits ended, as they often did, in a turn on the GrandCanal, and an ice in the Piazza, they appealed to the imagination of moresophisticated witnesses, who decided that the young American girl hadinherited the millions of the sick lady, and become the betrothed of thevice-consul, and that they were thus passing the days of their engagementin conformity to the American custom, however much at variance with thatof other civilizations.

This view of the affair was known to Maddalena, but not to Clementina,who in those days went back in many things to the tradition of her lifeat Middlemount. The vice-consul was of a tradition almost as simple, andhis longer experience set no very wide interval between them. It quicklycame to his telling her all about his dead wife and his marrieddaughters, and how, after his home was broken up, he thought he wouldtravel a little and see what that would do for him. He confessed that ithad not done much; he was always homesick, and he was ready to go as soonas the President sent out a consul to take his job off his hands. Hesaid that he had not enjoyed himself so much since he came to Venice ashe was doing now, and that he did not know what he should do ifClementina first got her call home. He betrayed no curiosity as to thepeculiar circumstances of her stay, but affected to regard it assomething quite normal, and he watched over her in every way with afatherly as well as an official vigilance which never degenerated intothe semblance of any other feeling. Clementina rested in his care inentire security. The world had quite fallen from her, or so much of itas she had seen at Florence, and in her indifference she lapsed into lifeas it was in the time before that with a tender renewal of her allegianceto it. There was nothing in the conversation of the vice-consul todistract her from this; and she said and did the things at Venice thatshe used to do at Middlemount, as nearly as she could; to make the daysof waiting pass more quickly, she tried to serve herself in ways thatscandalized the proud affection of Maddalena. It was not fit for thesignorina to make her bed or sweep her room; she might sew and knit ifshe would; but these other things were for servants like herself. Shecontinued in the faith of Clementina's gentility, and saw her always asshe had seen her first in the brief hour of her social splendor inFlorence. Clementina tried to make her understand how she lived atMiddlemount, but she only brought before Maddalena the humiliating imageof a contadina, which she rejected not only in Clementina's behalf, butthat of Miss Milray. She told her that she was laughing at her, and shewas fixed in her belief when the girl laughed at that notion. Herpoverty she easily conceived of; plenty of signorine in Italy were poor;and she protected her in it with the duty she did not divide quite evenlybetween her and the padrone.

The date which Clementina had fixed for hearing from Hinkle by cable hadlong passed, and the time when she first hoped to hear from him by letterhad come and gone. Her address was with the vice-consul as Mrs. Lander'shad been, and he could not be ignorant of her disappointment when hebrought her letters which she said were from home. On the surface ofthings it could only be from home that she wished to hear, but beneaththe surface he read an anxiety which mounted with each gratification ofthis wish. He had not seen much of the girl while Hinkle was in Venice;Mrs. Lander had not begun to make such constant use of him until Hinklehad gone; Mrs. Milray had told him of Clementina's earlier romance, andit was to Gregory that the vice-consul related the anxiety which he knewas little in its nature as in its object.

Clementina never doubted the good faith or constancy of her lover; buther heart misgave her as to his well-being when it sank at each failureof the vice-consul to bring her a letter from him. Something must havehappened to him, and it must have been something very serious to keep himfrom writing; or there was some mistake of the post-office. The vice-consul indulged himself in personal inquiries to make sure that themistake was not in the Venetian post-office; but he saw that he broughther greater distress in ascertaining the fact. He got to dreading a lookof resolute cheerfulness that came into her face, when he shook his headin sign that there were no letters, and he suffered from the coverteagerness with which she glanced at the superscriptions of those hebrought and failed to find the hoped-for letter among them. Ordeal forordeal, he was beginning to regret his trials under Mrs. Lander. In themhe could at least demand Clementina's sympathy, but against herself thiswas impossible. Once she noted his mute distress at hers, and broke intoa little laugh that he found very harrowing.

"I guess you hate it almost as much as I do, Mr. Bennam."

"I guess I do. I've half a mind to write the letter you want, myself."

"I've half a mind to let you--or the letter I'd like to write."

It had come to her thinking she would write again to Hinkle; but shecould not bring herself to do it. She often imagined doing it; she hadevery word of such a letter in her mind; and she dramatized every factconcerning it from the time she should put pen to paper, to the time whenshe should get back the answer that cleared the mystery of his silenceaway. The fond reveries helped her to bear her suspense; they helped tomake the days go by, to ease the doubt with which she lay down at night,and the heartsick hope with which she rose up in the morning.

One day, at the hour of his wonted visit, she say the vice-consul fromher balcony coming, as it seemed to her, with another figure in hisgondola, and a thousand conjectures whirled through her mind, and thencentred upon one idea. After the first glance she kept her eyes down,and would not look again while she told herself incessantly that it couldnot be, and that she was a fool and a goose and a perfect coot, to thinkof such a thing for a single moment. When she allowed herself, or forcedherself, to look a second time; as the boat drew near, she had to clingto the balcony parapet for support, in her disappointment.

The person whom the vice-consul helped out of the gondola was an elderlyman like himself, and she took a last refuge in the chance that he mightbe Hinkle's father, sent to bring her to him because he could not come toher; or to soften some terrible news to her. Then her fancy flutteredand fell, and she waited patiently for the fact to reveal itself. Therewas something countrified in the figure of the man, and somethingclerical in his face, though there was nothing in his uncouth bestclothes that confirmed this impression. In both face and figure therewas a vague resemblance to some one she had seen before, when the vice-consul said:

"Miss Claxon, I want to introduce the Rev. Mr. James B. Orson, ofMichigan." Mr. Orson took Clementina's hand into a dry, rough grasp,while he peered into her face with small, shy eyes. The vice-consuladded with a kind of official formality, "Mr. Orson is the half-nephew ofMr. Lander," and then Clementina now knew whom it was that he resembled."He has come to Venice," continued the vice-consul, "at the request ofMrs. Lander; and he did not know of her death until I informed him of thefact. I should have said that Mr. Orson is the son of Mr. Lander's half-sister. He can tell you the balance himself." The vice-consulpronounced the concluding word with a certain distaste, and the effect ofgladly retiring into the background.

"Won't you sit down?" said Clementina, and she added with one of theremnants of her Middlemount breeding, "Won't you let me take your hat?"

Mr. Orson in trying to comply with both her invitations, knocked his wellworn silk hat from the hand that held it, and sent it rolling across theroom, where Clementina pursued it and put it on the table.

"I may as well say at once," he began in a flat irresonant voice, "that Iam the representative of Mrs. Lander's heirs, and that I have a letterfrom her enclosing her last will and testament, which I have shown to theconsul here"--

"Vice-consul," the dignitary interrupted with an effect of rejecting anypart in the affair.

"Vice-consul, I should say,--and I wish to lay them both before you, inorder that"--

"Oh, that is all right," said Clementina sweetly. "I'm glad there is awill. I was afraid there wasn't any at all. Mr. Bennam and I looked forit everywhe'e." She smiled upon the Rev. Mr. Orson, who silently handedher a paper. It was the will which Milray had written for Mrs. Lander,and which, with whatever crazy motive, she had sent to her husband'skindred. It provided that each of them should be given five thousanddollars out of the estate, and that then all should go to Clementina.It was the will Mrs. Lander told her she had made, but she had never seenthe paper before, and the legal forms hid the meaning from her so thatshe was glad to have the vice-consul make it clear. Then she saidtranquilly, "Yes, that is the way I supposed it was."

Mr. Orson by no means shared her calm. He did not lift his voice, but onthe level it had taken it became agitated. "Mrs. Lander gave me theaddress of her lawyer in Boston when she sent me the will, and I made apoint of calling on him when I went East, to sail. I don't know why shewished me to come out to her, but being sick, I presume she naturallywished to see some of her own family."

He looked at Clementina as if he thought she might dispute this, but sheconsented at her sweetest, "Oh, yes, indeed," and he went on:

"I found her affairs in a very different condition from what she seemedto think. The estate was mostly in securities which had not beenproperly looked after, and they had depreciated until they were some ofthem not worth the paper they were printed on. The house in Boston ismortgaged up to its full value, I should say; and I should say that Mrs.Lander did not know where she stood. She seemed to think that she was avery rich woman, but she lived high, and her lawyer said he never couldmake her understand how the money was going. Mr. Lander seemed to losehis grip, the year he died, and engaged in some very unfortunatespeculations; I don't know whether he told her. I might enter intodetails"--

"Oh, that is not necessary," said Clementina, politely, witless of thedisastrous quality of the facts which Mr. Orson was imparting.

"But the sum and substance of it all is that there will not be more thanenough to pay the bequests to her own family, if there is that."

Clementina looked with smiling innocence at the vice-consul.

"That is to say," he explained, "there won't be anything at all for you,Miss Claxon."

"Well, that's what I always told Mrs. Lander I ratha, when she brought itup. I told her she ought to give it to his family," said Clementina,with a satisfaction in the event which the vice-consul seemed unable toshare, for he remained gloomily silent. "There is that last money I drewon the letter of credit, you can give that to Mr. Orson."

"I have told him about that money," said the vice-consul, dryly. "Itwill be handed over to him when the estate is settled, if there isn'tenough to pay the bequests without it."

"And the money which Mrs. Landa gave me before that," she pursued,eagerly. Mr. Orson had the effect of pricking up his ears, though it wasin fact merely a gleam of light that came into his eyes.

"That's yours," said the vice-consul, sourly, almost savagely. "Shedidn't give it to you without she wanted you to have it, and she didn'texpect you to pay her bequests with it. In my opinion," he burst out, ina wrathful recollection of his own sufferings from Mrs. Lander, "shedidn't give you a millionth part of your due for all the trouble she madeyou; and I want Mr. Orson to understand that, right here."

Clementina turned her impartial gaze upon Mr. Orson as if to verify theimpression of this extreme opinion upon him; he looked as if he neitheraccepted nor rejected it, and she concluded the sentence which the vice-consul had interrupted. "Because I ratha not keep it, if there isn'tenough without it."

The vice-consul gave way to violence. "It's none of your businesswhether there's enough or not. What you've got to do is to keep whatbelongs to you, and I'm going to see that you do. That's what I'm herefor." If this assumption of official authority did not awe Clementina,at least it put a check upon her headlong self-sacrifice. The vice-consul strengthened his hold upon her by asking, "What would you do.I should like to know, if you gave that up?"

"Oh, I should get along," she returned, Light-heartedly, but uponquestioning herself whether she should turn to Miss Milray for help,or appeal to the vice-consul himself, she was daunted a little, and sheadded, "But just as you say, Mr. Bennam."

"I say, keep what fairly belongs to you. It's only two or three hundreddollars at the outside," he explained to Mr. Orson's hungry eyes; butperhaps the sum did not affect the country minister's imagination astrifling; his yearly salary must sometimes have been little more.

The whole interview left the vice-consul out of humor with both partiesto the affair; and as to Clementina, between the ideals of a perfectlittle saint, and a perfect little simpleton he remained for the presentunable to class her.

XXXV.

Clementina and the Vice-Consul afterwards agreed that Mrs. Lander musthave sent the will to Mr. Orson in one of those moments of suspicion whenshe distrusted everyone about her, or in that trouble concerning herhusband's kindred which had grown upon her more and more, as a means ofassuring them that they were provided for.

"But even then," the vice-consul concluded, "I don't see why she wantedthis man to come out here. The only explanation is that she was a littleoff her base towards the last. That's the charitable supposition."

"I don't think she was herself, some of the time," Clementina assented inacceptance of the kindly construction.

The vice-consul modified his good will toward Mrs. Lander's memory so faras to say, "Well, if she'd been somebody else most of the time, it wouldhave been an improvement."

The talk turned upon Mr. Orson, and what he would probably do. The vice-consul had found him a cheap lodging, at his request, and he seemed tohave settled down at Venice either without the will or without the powerto go home, but the vice-consul did not know where he ate, or what he didwith himself except at the times when he came for letters. Once or twicewhen he looked him up he found him writing, and then the ministerexplained that he had promised to "correspond" for an organ of his sectin the Northwest; but he owned that there was no money in it. He wasotherwise reticent and even furtive in his manner. He did not seem to gomuch about the city, but kept to his own room; and if he was writing ofVenice it must have been chiefly from his acquaintance with the littlecourt into which his windows looked. He affected the vice-consul asforlorn and helpless, and he pitied him and rather liked him as a fellow-victim of Mrs. Lander.

One morning Mr. Orson came to see Clementina, and after a brief passageof opinion upon the weather, he fell into an embarrassed silence fromwhich he pulled himself at last with a visible effort. "I hardly knowhow to lay before you what I have to say, Miss Claxon," he began, "and Imust ask you to put the best construction upon it. I have never beenreduced to a similar distress before. You would naturally think that Iwould turn to the vice-consul, on such an occasion; but I feel, throughour relation to the--to Mrs. Lander--ah--somewhat more at home with you."

He stopped, as if he wished to be asked his business, and she entreatedhim, "Why, what is it, Mr. Osson? Is there something I can do? Thereisn't anything I wouldn't!"

A gleam, watery and faint, which still could not be quite winked away,came into his small eyes. "Why, the fact is, could you--ah--advance meabout five dollars?"

"Why, Mr. Orson!" she began, and he seemed to think she wished towithdraw her offer of help, for he interposed.

"I will repay it as soon as I get an expected remittance from home.I came out on the invitation of Mrs. Lander, and as her guest, and Isupposed"--

"Oh, don't say a wo'd!" cried Clementina, but now that he had begun hewas powerless to stop.

"I would not ask, but my landlady has pressed me for her rent--I supposeshe needs it--and I have been reduced to the last copper"--

The girl whose eyes the tears of self pity so rarely visited, broke intoa sob that seemed to surprise her visitor. But she checked herself aswith a quick inspiration: "Have you been to breakfast?"

"Well--ah--not this morning," Mr. Orson admitted, as if to imply thathaving breakfasted some other morning might be supposed to serve thepurpose.

She left him and ran to the door. "Maddalena, Maddalena!" she called;and Maddalena responded with a frightened voice from the direction of thekitchen:

"Vengo subito!"

She hurried out with the coffee-pot in her hand, as if she had just takenit up when Clementina called; and she halted for the whispered colloquybetween them which took place before she set it down on the table alreadylaid for breakfast; then she hurried out of the room again. She cameback with a cantaloupe and grapes, and cold ham, and put them beforeClementina and her guest, who both ignored the hunger with which he swepteverything before him. When his famine had left nothing, he said, indecorous compliment:

"That is very good coffee, I should think the genuine berry, though I amtold that they adulterate coffee a great deal in Europe."

"Do they?" asked Clementina. "I didn't know it."

She left him still sitting before the table, and came back with somebank-notes in her hand. "Are you sure you hadn't betta take moa?" sheasked.

"I think that five dollars will be all that I shall require," heanswered, with dignity. "I should be unwilling to accept more. I shallundoubtedly receive some remittances soon."

"Oh, I know you will," Clementina returned, and she added, "I am waitingfor lettas myself; I don't think any one ought to give up."

The preacher ignored the appeal which was in her tone rather than herwords, and went on to explain at length the circumstances of his havingcome to Europe so unprovided against chances. When he wished to excusehis imprudence, she cried out, "Oh, don't say a wo'd! It's just like myown fatha," and she told him some things of her home which apparently didnot interest him very much. He had a kind of dull, cold self-absorptionin which he was indeed so little like her father that only her kindnessfor the lonely man could have justified her in thinking there was anyresemblance.

She did not see him again for a week, and meantime she did not tell thevice-consul of what had happened. But an anxiety for the minister beganto mingle with her anxieties for herself; she constantly wondered why shedid not hear from her lover, and she occasionally wondered whether Mr.Orson were not falling into want again. She had decided to betray hiscondition to the vice-consul, when he came, bringing the money she hadlent him. He had received a remittance from an unexpected source; and hehoped she would excuse his delay in repaying her loan. She wished not totake the money, at least till he was quite sure he should not want it,but he insisted.

"I have enough to keep me, now, till I hear from other sources, with themeans for returning home. I see no object in continuing here, under thecircumstances."

In the relief which she felt for him Clementina's heart throbbed with apain which was all for herself. Why should she wait any longer either?For that instant she abandoned the hope which had kept her up so long; awave of homesickness overwhelmed her.

"I should like to go back, too," she said. "I don't see why I'm staying."

Mr. Osson, why can't you let me"--she was going to say--"go home withyou? "But she really said what was also in her heart, "Why can't you letme give you the money to go home? It is all Mrs. Landa's money, anyway."

"There is certainly that view of the matter," he assented with apromptness that might have suggested a lurking grudge for the vice-consul's decision that she ought to keep the money Mrs. Lander had givenher.

But Clementina urged unsuspiciously: "Oh, yes, indeed! And I shall feelbetter if you take it. I only wish I could go home, too!"

The minister was silent while he was revolving, with whatever scruple orreluctance, a compromise suitable to the occasion. Then he said, "Whyshould we not return together?"

"Would you take me?" she entreated.

"That should be as you wished. I am not much acquainted with the usagesin such matters, but I presume that it would be entirely practicable. Wecould ask the vice-consul."

"Yes"--

"He must have had considerable experience in cases of the kind. Wouldyour friends meet you in New York, or"--

"I don't know," said Clementina with a pang for the thought of a meetingshe had sometimes fancied there, when her lover had come out for her, andher father had been told to come and receive them. "No," she sighed,"the'e wouldn't be time to let them know. But it wouldn't make anydifference. I could get home from New Yo'k alone," she added,listlessly. Her spirits had fallen again. She saw that she could notleave Venice till she had heard in some sort from the letter she hadwritten. "Perhaps it couldn't be done, after all. But I will see Mr.Bennam about it, Mr. Osson; and I know he will want you to have that muchof the money. He will be coming he'e, soon."

He rose upon what he must have thought her hint, and said, "I should notwish to have him swayed against his judgment."

The vice-consul came not long after the minister had left her, and shebegan upon what she wished to do for him.

The vice-consul was against it. "I would rather lend him the money outof my own pocket. How are you going to get along yourself, if you lethim have so much?"

She did not answer at once. Then she said, hopelessly, "I've a greatmind to go home with him. I don't believe there's any use waiting hereany longa." The vice-consul could not say anything to this. She added,"Yes, I believe I will go home. We we'e talking about it, the other day,and he is willing to let me go with him."

"I should think he would be," the vice-consul retorted in his indignationfor her. "Did you offer to pay for his passage?"

"Yes," she owned, "I did," and again the vice-consul could say nothing."If I went, it wouldn't make any difference whether it took it all ornot. I should have plenty to get home from New York with."

"Well," the vice-consul assented, dryly, "it's for you to say."

"I know you don't want me to do it!"

"Well, I shall miss you," he answered, evasively.

"And I shall miss you, too, Mr. Bennam. Don't you believe it? But if Idon't take this chance to get home, I don't know when I shall eva haveanotha. And there isn't any use waiting--no, there isn't!"

The vice-consul laughed at the sort of imperative despair in her tone."How are you going? Which way, I mean."

They counted up Clementina's debts and assets, and they found that if shetook the next steamer from Genoa, which was to sail in four days, shewould have enough to pay her own way and Mr. Orson's to New York, andstill have some thirty dollars over, for her expenses home toMiddlemount. They allowed for a second cabin-passage, which the vice-consul said was perfectly good on the Genoa steamers. He rather urgedthe gentility and comfort of the second cabin-passage, but his reasons infavor of it were wasted upon Clementina's indifference; she wished to gethome, now, and she did not care how. She asked the vice-consul to seethe minister for her, and if he were ready and willing, to telegraph fortheir tickets. He transacted the business so promptly that he was ableto tell her when he came in the evening that everything was in train.He excused his coming; he said that now she was going so soon, he wantedto see all he could of her. He offered no excuse when he came the nextmorning; but he said he had got a letter for her and thought she mightwant to have it at once.

He took it out of his hat and gave it to her. It was addressed inHinkle's writing; her answer had come at last; she stood trembling withit in her hand.

The vice-consul smiled. "Is that the one?"

"Yes," she whispered back.

"All right." He took his hat, and set it on the back of his head beforehe left her without other salutation.

Then Clementina opened her letter. It was in a woman's hand, and thewriter made haste to explain at the beginning that she was George W.Hinkle's sister, and that she was writing for him; for though he was nowout of danger, he was still very weak, and they had all been anxiousabout him. A month before, he had been hurt in a railroad collision, andhad come home from the West, where the accident happened, sufferingmainly from shock, as his doctor thought; he had taken to his bed atonce, and had not risen from it since. He had been out of his head agreat part of the time, and had been forbidden everything that coulddistress or excite him. His sister said that she was writing for him nowas soon as he had seen Clementina's letter; it had been forwarded fromone address to another, and had at last found him there at his home inOhio. He wished to say that he would come out for Clementina as soon ashe was allowed to undertake the journey, and in the meantime she must lethim know constantly where she was. The letter closed with a few words oflove in his own handwriting.

Clementina rose from reading it, and put on her hat in a bewilderedimpulse to go to him at once; she knew, in spite of all the cautions andreserves of the letter that he must still be very sick. When she cameout of her daze she found that she could only go to the vice-consul. Sheput the letter in his hands to let it explain itself. "You'll undastand,now," she said. "What shall I do?"

When he had read it, he smiled and answered, "I guess I understood prettywell before, though I wasn't posted on names. Well, I suppose you'llwant to layout most of your capital on cables, now?"

"Yes," she laughed, and then she suddenly lamented, "Why didn't theytelegraph?"

"Well, I guess he hadn't the head for it," said the vice-consul, "and therest wouldn't think of it. They wouldn't, in the country."

The vice-consul reached for his hat, and he led the way to Clementina'sgondola at his garden gate, in greater haste than she. At the telegraphoffice he framed a dispatch which for expansive fullness and precisionwas apparently unexampled in the experience of the clerk who took it andspelt over its English with them. It asked an answer in the vice-consul's care, and, "I'll tell you what, Miss Claxon," he said with ahusky weakness in his voice, "I wish you'd let this be my treat."

She understood. "Do you really, Mr. Bennam?"

"I do indeed."

"Well, then, I will," she said, but when he wished to include in histreat the dispatch she sent home to her father announcing her coming, shewould not let him.

He looked at his watch, as they rowed away. "It's eight o'clock here,now, and it will reach Ohio about six hours earlier; but you can't expectan answer tonight, you know."

"No"--She had expected it though, he could see that.

"But whenever it comes, I'll bring it right round to you. Now it's allgoing to be straight, don't you be afraid, and you're going home thequickest way you can get there. I've been looking up the sailings, andthis Genoa boat will get you to New York about as soon as any could fromLiverpool. Besides there's always a chance of missing connections andlosing time between here and England. I should stick to the Genoa boat."

"Oh I shall," said Clementina, far less fidgetted than he. She was, infact, resting securely again in the faith which had never really desertedher, and had only seemed for a little time to waver from her when herhope went. Now that she had telegraphed, her heart was at peace, and sheeven laughed as she answered the anxious vice-consul.

XXXVI.

The next morning Clementina watched for the vice-consul from her balcony.She knew he would not send; she knew he would come; but it, was nearlynoon before she saw him coming. They caught sight of each other almostat the same moment, and he stood up in his boat, and waved somethingwhite in his hand, which must be a dispatch for her.

It acknowledged her telegram and reported George still improving; hisfather would meet her steamer in New York. It was very reassuring, itwas every thing hopeful; but when she had read it she gave it to thevice-consul for encouragement.

"It's all right, Miss Claxon," he said, stoutly. "Don't you be troubledabout Mr. Hinkle's not coming to meet you himself. He can't keep tooquiet for a while yet."

"Oh, yes," said Clementina, patiently.

"If you really want somebody to worry about, you can help Mr. Orson toworry about himself!" the vice-consul went on, with the grimness he hadformerly used in speaking of Mrs. Lander. "He's sick, or he thinks he'sgoing to be. He sent round for me this morning, and I found him in bed.You may have to go home alone. But I guess he's more scared than hurt."

Her heart sank, and then rose in revolt against the mere idea of delay."I wonder if I ought to go and see him," she said.

"Well, it would be a kindness," returned the vice-consul, with apromptness that unmasked the apprehension he felt for the sick man.

He did not offer to go with her, and she took Maddalena. She found theminister seated in his chair beside his bed. A three days' beardheightened the gauntness of his face; he did not move when his padronaannounced her.

"I am not any better," he answered when she said that she was glad to seehim up. "I am merely resting; the bed is hard. I regret to say," headded, with a sort of formal impersonality, "that I shall be unable toaccompany you home, Miss Claxon. That is, if you still think of takingthe steamer this week."

Her whole being had set homeward in a tide that already seemed to driftthe vessel from its moorings. "What--what do you mean?" she gasped.

"I didn't know," he returned, "but that in view of the circumstances--allthe circumstances--you might be intending to defer your departure to somelater steamer."

"No, no, no! I must go, now. I couldn't wait a day, an hour, a minuteafter the first chance of going. You don't know what you are saying!He might die if I told him I was not coming; and then what should I do?"This was what Clementina said to herself; but what she said to Mr. Orson,with an inspiration from her terror at his suggestion was, "Don't youthink a little chicken broth would do you good, Mr. Osson? I don'tbelieve but what it would."

A wistful gleam came into the preacher's eyes. "It might," he admitted,and then she knew what must be his malady. She sent Maddalena to atrattoria for the soup, and she did not leave him, even after she hadseen its effect upon him. It was not hard to persuade him that he hadbetter come home with her; and she had him there, tucked away with hisfew poor belongings, in the most comfortable room the padrone couldimagine, when the vice-consul came in the evening.

"He says he thinks he can go, now," she ended, when she had told thevice-consul. "And I know he can. It wasn't anything but poor living."

"It looks more like no living," said the vice-consul. "Why didn't theold fool let some one know that he was short of money? "He went on witha partial transfer of his contempt of the preacher to her, "I suppose ifhe'd been sick instead of hungry, you'd have waited over till the nextsteamer for him."

She cast down her eyes. "I don't know what you'll think of me. I shouldhave been sorry for him, and I should have wanted to stay." She liftedher eyes and looked the vice-consul defiantly in the face. "But hehadn't the fust claim on me, and I should have gone--I couldn't, havehelped it!--I should have gone, if he had been dying!"

"Well, you've got more horse-sense," said the vice-consul, "than any tenmen I ever saw," and he testified his admiration of her by putting hisarms round her, where she stood before him, and kissing her. "Don't youmind," he explained. "If my youngest girl had lived, she would have beenabout your age."

"Oh, it's all right, Mr. Bennam," said Clementina.

When the time came for them to leave Venice, Mr. Orson was even eager togo. The vice-consul would have gone with them in contempt of theofficial responsibilities which he felt to be such a thankless burden,but there was really no need of his going, and he and Clementina treatedthe question with the matter-of-fact impartiality which they liked ineach other. He saw her off at the station where Maddalena had come totake the train for Florence in token of her devotion to the signorina,whom she would not outstay in Venice. She wept long and loud uponClementina's neck, so that even Clementina was once moved to put herhandkerchief to her tearless eyes.

At the last moment she had a question which she referred to the viceconsul. "Should you tell him?" she asked.

"Tell who what?" he retorted.

"Mr. Osson-that I wouldn't have stayed for him."

"Do you think it would make you feel any better?" asked the consul, uponreflection.

"I believe he ought to know."

"Well, then, I guess I should do it."

The time did not come for her confession till they had nearly reached theend of their voyage. It followed upon something like a confession fromthe minister himself, which he made the day he struggled on deck with herhelp, after spending a week in his berth.

"Here is something," he said, "which appears to be for you, Miss Claxon.I found it among some letters for Mrs. Lander which Mr. Bennam gave meafter my arrival, and I only observed the address in looking over thepapers in my valise this morning." He handed her a telegram. "I trustthat it is nothing requiring immediate attention."

Clementina read it at a glance. "No," she answered, and for a while shecould not say anything more; it was a cable message which Hinkle's sistermust have sent her after writing. No evil had come of its failure toreach her, and she recalled without bitterness the suffering which wouldhave been spared her if she had got it before. It was when she thoughtof the suffering of her lover from the silence which must have made himdoubt her, that she could not speak. As soon as she governed herselfagainst her first resentment she said, with a little sigh, "It is allright, now, Mr. Osson," and her stress upon the word seemed to troublehim with no misgiving. "Besides, if you're to blame for not noticing, sois Mr. Bennam, and I don't want to blame any one." She hesitated amoment before she added: "I have got to tell you something, now, becauseI think you ought to know it. I am going home to be married, Mr. Osson,and this message is from the gentleman I am going to be married to.He has been very sick, and I don't know yet as he'll be able to meet mein New Yo'k; but his fatha will."

Mr. Orson showed no interest in these facts beyond a silent attention toher words, which might have passed for an open indifference. At his timeof life all such questions, which are of permanent importance to women,affect men hardly more than the angels who neither marry nor are given inmarriage. Besides, as a minister he must have had a surfeit of allpossible qualities in the love affairs of people intending matrimony.As a casuist he was more reasonably concerned in the next fact whichClementina laid before him.

"And the otha day, there in Venice when you we'e sick, and you seemed tothink that I might put off stahting home till the next steamer, I don'tknow but I let you believe I would."

"I supposed that the delay of a week or two could make no materialdifference to you."

"But now you see that it would. And I feel as if I ought to tell you--I spoke to Mr. Bennam about it, and he didn't tell me not to--that Ishouldn't have staid, no not for anything in the wo'ld. I had to do whatI did at the time, but eva since it has seemed as if I had deceived you,and I don't want to have it seem so any longer. It isn't because I don'thate to tell you; I do; but I guess if it was to happen over again Icouldn't feel any different. Do you want I should tell the deck-stewahdto bring you some beef-tea?"

"I think I could relish a small portion," said Mr. Orson, cautiously, andhe said nothing more.

Clementina left him with her nerves in a flutter, and she did not comeback to him until she decided that it was time to help him down to hiscabin. He suffered her to do this in silence, but at the door he clearedhis throat and began:

"I have reflected upon what you told me, and I have tried to regard thecase from all points. I believe that I have done so, without personalfeeling, and I think it my duty to say, fully and freely, that I believeyou would have done perfectly right not to remain."

"Yes," said Clementina, "I thought you would think so."

They parted emotionlessly to all outward effect, and when they met againit was without a sign of having passed through a crisis of sentiment.Neither referred to the matter again, but from that time the ministertreated Clementina with a deference not without some shadows oftenderness such as her helplessness in Venice had apparently neverinspired. She had cast out of her mind all lingering hardness toward himin telling him the hard truth, and she met his faint relentings with agrateful gladness which showed itself in her constant care of him.

This helped her a little to forget the strain of the anxiety thatincreased upon her as the time shortened between the last news of herlover and the next; and there was perhaps no more exaggeration in theimport than in the terms of the formal acknowledgment which Mr. Orsonmade her as their steamer sighted Fire Island Light, and they both knewthat their voyage had ended: "I may not be able to say to you in thehurry of our arrival in New York that I am obliged to you for a good manylittle attentions, which I should be pleased to reciprocate ifopportunity offered. I do not think I am going too far in saying thatthey are such as a daughter might offer a parent."

"Oh, don't speak of it, Mr. Osson!" she protested. "I haven't doneanything that any one wouldn't have done."

"I presume," said the minister, thoughtfully, as if retiring from anextreme position, "that they are such as others similarly circumstanced,might have done, but it will always be a source of satisfaction for youto reflect that you have not neglected them."

XXXVII.

In the crowd which thronged the steamer's dock at Hoboken, Clementinastrained her eyes to make out some one who looked enough like her loverto be his father, and she began to be afraid that they might miss eachother when she failed. She walked slowly down the gangway, with thepeople that thronged it, glad to be hidden by them from her failure, butat the last step she was caught aside by a small blackeyed, black-hairedwoman, who called out "Isn't this Miss Claxon? I'm Georrge's sisterr.Oh, you'rre just like what he said! I knew it! I knew it!" and thenhugged her and kissed her, and passed her to the little lean dark old mannext her. "This is fatherr. I knew you couldn't tell us, because I takeafterr him, and Georrge is exactly like motherr."

George's father took her hand timidly, but found courage to say to hisdaughter, "Hadn't you betterr let her own fatherr have a chance at herr?"and amidst a tempest of apologies and self blame from the sister, Claxonshowed himself over the shoulders of the little man.

"Why, there wa'n't no hurry, as long as she's he'a," he said, in promptenjoyment of the joke, and he and Clementina sparely kissed each other.

"Why, fatha!" she said. "I didn't expect you to come to New Yo'k to meetme."

"Well, I didn't ha'dly expect it myself; but I'd neva been to Yo'k, and Ithought I might as well come. Things ah' ratha slack at home, just now,anyway."

She did not heed his explanation. "We'e you sca'ed when you got mydispatch?"

"No, we kind of expected you'd come any time, the way you wrote afta Mrs.Landa died. We thought something must be up."

"Yes," she said, absently. Then, "Whe'e's motha?" she asked.

"Well, I guess she thought she couldn't get round to it, exactly," saidthe father. "She's all right. Needn't ask you!"

"No, I'm fust-rate," Clementina returned, with a silent joy in herfather's face and voice. She went back in it to the girl of a year ago,and the world which had come between them since their parting rolled awayas if it had never been there.

Neither of them said anything about that. She named over her brothersand sisters, and he answered, "Yes, yes," in assurance of their well-being, and then he explained, as if that were the only point of realinterest, "I see your folks waitin' he'e fo' somebody, and I thought I'dsee if it wa'n't the same one, and we kind of struck up an acquaintanceon your account befo'e you got he'e, Clem."

"Your folks!" she silently repeated to herself. "Yes, they ah' mine!"and she stood trying to realize the strange fact, while George's sisterpoured out a voluminous comment upon Claxon's spare statement, andGeorge's father admired her volubility with the shut smile of toothlessage. She spoke with the burr which the Scotch-Irish settlers haveimparted to the whole middle West, but it was music to Clementina, whoheard now and then a tone of her lover in his sister's voice. In themidst of it all she caught sight of a mute unfriended figure just withouttheir circle, his traveling shawl hanging loose upon his shoulders, andthe valise which had formed his sole baggage in the voyage to and fromEurope pulling his long hand out of his coat sleeve.

"Oh, yes," she said, "here is Mr. Osson that came ova with me, fatha;he's a relation of Mr. Landa's," and she presented him to them all.

He shifted his valise to the left hand, and shook hands with each,asking, "What name?" and then fell motionless again.

"Well," said her father, "I guess this is the end of this paht of theceremony, and I'm goin' to see your baggage through the custom-house,Clementina; I've read about it, and I want to know how it's done. I wantto see what you ah' tryin' to smuggle in."

"I guess you won't find much," she said. "But you'll want the keys,won't you?" She called to him, as he was stalking away.

"Well, I guess that would be a good idea. Want to help, Miss Hinkle?"

"I guess we might as well all help," said Clementina, and Mr. Orsonincluded himself in the invitation. He seemed unable to separate himselffrom them, though the passage of Clementina's baggage through thecustoms, and its delivery to an expressman for the hotel where theHinkles said they were staying might well have severed the last tiebetween them.

"Ah' you going straight home, Mr. Osson?" she asked, to rescue him fromthe forgetfulness into which they were all letting him fall.

"I think I will remain over a day," he answered. "I may go on to Bostonbefore starting West."

"Well, that's right," said Clementina's father with the wish to approveeverything native to him, and an instinctive sense of Clementina's wishto befriend the minister. "Betta come to oua hotel. We're all goin' tothe same one."

"I presume it is a good one?" Mr. Orson assented.

"Well," said Claxon, "you must make Miss Hinkle, he'a, stand it if itain't. She's got me to go to it."

Mr. Orson apparently could not enter into the joke; but he accompaniedthe party, which again began to forget him, across the ferry and up theelevated road to the street car that formed the last stage of theirprogress to the hotel. At this point George's sister fell silent, andClementina's father burst out, "Look he'a! I guess we betty not keepthis up any Tonga; I don't believe much in surprises, and I guess shebetta know it now!"

He looked at George's sister as if for authority to speak further, andClementina looked at her, too, while George's father nervously moistenedhis smiling lips with the tip of his tongue, and let his twinkling eyesrest upon Clementina's face.

"Is he at the hotel?" she asked.

"Yes," said his sister, monosyllabic for once.

"I knew it," said Clementina, and she was only half aware of the fullnesswith which his sister now explained how he wanted to come so much thatthe doctor thought he had better, but that they had made him promise hewould not try to meet her at the steamer, lest it should be too great atrial of his strength.

"Yes," Clementina assented, when the story came to an end and wasbeginning over again.

She had an inexplicable moment when she stood before her lover in theroom where they left her to meet him alone. She faltered and he waitedconstrained by her constraint.

"Is it all a mistake, Clementina?" he asked, with a piteous smile.

"No, no!"

"Am I so much changed?"

"No; you are looking better than I expected."

"And you are not sorry-for anything?"

"No, I am--Perhaps I have thought of you too much! It seems sostrange."

"I understand," he answered. "We have been like spirits to each other,and now we find that we are alive and on the earth like other people; andwe are not used to it."

"It must be something like that."

"But if it's something else--if you have the least regret,--if you wouldrather "--He stopped, and they remained looking at each other a moment.Then she turned her head, and glanced out of the window, as if somethingthere had caught her sight.

"It's a very pleasant view, isn't it?" she said; and she lifted her handsto her head, and took off her hat, with an effect of having got homeafter absence, to stay.

XXXVIII.

It was possibly through some sense finer than any cognition thatClementina felt in meeting her lover that she had taken up a new burdenrather than laid down an old one. Afterwards, when they once recurred tothat meeting, and she tried to explain for him the hesitation which shehad not been able to hide, she could only say, "I presume I didn't wantto begin unless I was sure I could carry out. It would have been silly."

Her confession, if it was a confession, was made when one of his returnsto health, or rather one of the arrests of his unhealth, flushed themwith hope and courage; but before that first meeting was ended she knewthat he had overtasked his strength, in coming to New York, and he mustnot try it further. "Fatha," she said to Claxon, with the authority of awoman doing her duty, "I'm not going to let Geo'ge go up to Middlemount,with all the excitement. It will be as much as he can do to get home.You can tell mother about it; and the rest. I did suppose it would beMr. Richling that would marry us, and I always wanted him to, but I guesssomebody else can do it as well."

"Just as you say, Clem," her father assented. "Why not Brother Osson,he'a?" he suggested with a pleasure in the joke, whatever it was, thatthe minister's relation to Clementina involved. "I guess he can put offhis visit to Boston long enough."

"Well, I was thinking of him," said Clementina. "Will you ask him?"

"Yes. I'll get round to it, in the mohning."

"No-now; right away. I've been talking with Geo'ge about it; and the'e'sno sense in putting it off. I ought to begin taking care of him atonce."

"Well, I guess when I tell your motha how you're layin' hold, she won'tthink it's the same pusson," said her father, proudly.

"But it is; I haven't changed a bit."

"You ha'n't changed for the wohse, anyway."

"Didn't I always try to do what I had to?"

"I guess you did, Clem."

"Well, then!"

Mr. Orson, after a decent hesitation, consented to perform the ceremony.It took place in a parlor of the hotel, according to the law of New York,which facilitates marriage so greatly in all respects that it is strangeany one in the State should remain single. He had then a luxury ofchoice between attaching himself to the bridal couple as far as Ohio onhis journey home to Michigan, or to Claxon who was going to take the boatfor Boston the next day on his way to Middlemount. He decided forClaxon, since he could then see Mrs. Lander's lawyer at once, and arrangewith him for getting out of the vice-consul's hands the money which hewas holding for an authoritative demand. He accepted without openreproach the handsome fee which the elder Hinkle gave him for hisservices, and even went so far as to say, "If your son should ever beblest with a return to health, he has got a helpmeet such as there arevery few of." He then admonished the young couple, in whatever trialslife should have in store for them, to be resigned, and always to beprepared for the worst. When he came later to take leave of them, he wasapparently not equal to the task of fitly acknowledging the return whichHinkle made him of all the money remaining to Clementina out of the sumlast given her by Mrs. Lander, but he hid any disappointment he mighthave suffered, and with a brief, "Thank you," put it in his pocket.

Hinkle told Clementina of the apathetic behavior of Mr. Orson; he addedwith a laugh like his old self, "It's the best that he doesn't seemprepared for."

"Yes," she assented. "He wasn't very chee'ful. But I presume that hemeant well. It must be a trial for him to find out that Mrs. Landawasn't rich, after all."

It was apparently never a trial to her. She went to Ohio with herhusband and took up her life on the farm, where it was wisely judged thathe had the best chance of working out of the wreck of his health andstrength. There was often the promise and always the hope of this, andtheir love knew no doubt of the future. Her sisters-in-law delighted inall her strangeness and difference, while they petted her as somethingnot to be separated from him in their petting of their brother; to hismother she was the darling which her youngest had never ceased to be;Clementina once went so far as to say to him that if she was everanything she would like to be a Moravian.

The question of religion was always related in their minds to thequestion of Gregory, to whom they did justice in their trust of eachother. It was Hinkle himself who reasoned out that if Gregory wasnarrow, his narrowness was of his conscience and not of his heart or hismind. She respected the memory of her first lover; but it was as if hewere dead, now, as well as her young dream of him, and she read with acurious sense of remoteness, a paragraph which her husband found in thereligious intelligence of his Sunday paper, announcing the marriage ofthe Rev. Frank Gregory to a lady described as having been a frequent andbountiful contributor to the foreign missions. She was apparently awidow, and they conjectured that she was older than he. His departurefor his chosen field of missionary labor in China formed part of the newscommunicated by the rather exulting paragraph.

"Well, that is all right," said Clementina's husband. "He is a good man,and he is where he can do nothing but good. I am glad I needn't feelsorry for him, any more."

Clementina's father must have given such a report of Hinkle and hisfamily, that they felt easy at home in leaving her to the lot she hadchosen. When Claxon parted from her, he talked of coming out with hermother to see her that fall; but it was more than a year before they gotround to it. They did not come till after the birth of her little girl,and her father then humorously allowed that perhaps they would not havegot round to it at all if something of the kind had not happened. TheHinkles and her father and mother liked one another, so much that in thefirst glow of his enthusiasm Claxon talked of settling down in Ohio, andthe older Hinkle drove him about to look at some places that were forsale. But it ended in his saying one day that he missed the hills, andhe did not believe that he would know enough to come in when it rained ifhe did not see old Middlemount with his nightcap on first. His wife andhe started home with the impatience of their years, rather earlier thanthey had meant to go, and they were silent for a little while after theyleft the flag-station where Hinkle and Clementina had put them aboardtheir train.

"Well?" said Claxon, at last.

"Well?" echoed his wife, and then she did not speak for a little whilelonger. At last she asked,

"D'he look that way when you fust see him in New Yo'k?"

Claxon gave his honesty time to get the better of his optimism. Eventhen he answered evasively, "He doos look pootty slim."

"The way I cypher it out," said his wife, "he no business to let hermarry him, if he wa'n't goin' to get well. It was throwin' of herselfaway, as you may say."

"I don't know about that," said Claxon, as if the point had occurred tohim, too, and had been already argued in his mind. "I guess they must'a' had it out, there in New York before they got married--or she had.I don't believe but what he expected to get well, right away. It's thekind of a thing that lingas along, and lingas along. As fah fo'th asClem went, I guess there wa'n't any let about it. I guess she'd made upher mind from the staht, and she was goin' to have him if she had to holdhim on his feet to do it. Look he'a! W hat would you done?"

"Oh, I presume we're all fools!" said Mrs. Claxon, impatient of a sex notalways so frank with itself. "But that don't excuse him."

"I don't say it doos," her husband admitted. "But I presume he wasexpectin' to get well right away, then. And I don't believe," he added,energetically, "but what he will, yet. As I undastand, there ain'tanything ogganic about him. It's just this he'e nuvvous prostration,resultin' from shock, his docta tells me; and he'll wo'k out of that allright."

They said no more, and Mrs. Claxon did not recur to any phase of thesituation till she undid the lunch which the Hinkles had put up for them,and laid out on the napkin in her lap the portions of cold ham and coldchicken, the buttered biscuit, and the little pot of apple-butter, withthe large bottle of cold coffee. Then she sighed, "They live well."

"Yes," said her husband, glad of any concession, "and they ah' goodfolks. And Clem's as happy as a bud with 'em, you can see that."

"Oh, she was always happy enough, if that's all you want. I presume shewas happy with that hectorin' old thing that fooled her out of hermoney."

It was Clementina who drove the clay-bank colt away from the stationafter the train had passed out of sight. Her husband sat beside her, andlet her take the reins from his nerveless grasp; and when they got intothe shelter of the piece of woods that the road passed through he put uphis hands to his face, and broke into sobs. She allowed him to weep on,though she kept saying, "Geo'ge, Geo'ge," softly, and stroking his kneewith the hand next him. When his sobbing stopped, she said, "I guessthey've had a pleasant visit; but I'm glad we'a together again." He tookup her hand and kissed the back of it, and then clutched it hard, but didnot speak. "It's strange," she went on, "how I used to be home-sick forfather and motha"--she had sometimes lost her Yankee accent in herassociation with his people, and spoke with their Western burr, but shefound it in moments of deeper feeling--" when I was there in Europe, andnow I'm glad to have them go. I don't want anybody to be between us; andI want to go back to just the way we we'e befo'e they came. It's been astrain on you, and now you must throw it all off and rest, and get upyour strength. One thing, I could see that fatha noticed the gain youhad made since he saw you in New Yo'k. He spoke about it to me the fustthing, and he feels just the way I do about it. He don't want you tohurry and get well, but take it slowly, and not excite yourself. Hebelieves in your gleaner, and he knows all about machinery. He says thepatent makes it puffectly safe, and you can take your own time aboutpushing it; it's su'a to go. And motha liked you. She's not one to talka great deal--she always leaves that to father and me--but she's got deepfeelings, and she just worshipped the baby! I neva saw her take a childin her ahms before; but she seemed to want to hold the baby all thetime." She stopped, and then added, tenderly, "Now, I know what you ah'thinking about, Geo'ge, and I don't want you to think about it any more.If you do, I shall give up."

They had come to a bad piece of road where a Slough of thick mud forcedthe wagon-way over the stumps of a turnout in the woods. "You had betterlet me have the reins, Clementina," he said. He drove home over theyellow leaves of the hickories and the crimson leaves of the maples, thatheavy with the morning dew, fell slanting through the still air; and onthe way he began to sing; his singing made her heart ache. His fathercame out to put up the colt for him; and Hinkle would not have his help.

He unhitched the colt himself, while his father trembled by with bentknees; he clapped the colt on the haunch and started him through thepasture-bars with a gay shout, and then put his arm round Clementina'swaist, and walked her into the kitchen amidst the grins of his mother andsisters, who said he ought to be ashamed.

The winter passed, and in the spring he was not so well as he had been inthe fall. It was the out-door life which was best for him, and he pickedup again in the summer. When another autumn came, it was thought bestfor him not to risk the confinement of another winter in the North. Theprolongation of the summer in the South would complete his cure, andClementina took her baby and went with him to Florida. He was very well,there, and courageous letters came to Middlemount and Ohio, boasting ofthe gains he had made. One day toward spring he came in languid from thedamp, unnatural heat, and the next day he had a fever, which the doctorwould not, in a resort absolutely free from malaria, pronounce malarial.After it had once declared itself, in compliance with this reluctance, asimple fever, Hinkle was delirious, and he never knew Clementina againfor the mother of his child. They were once more at Venice in hisravings, and he was reasoning with her that Belsky was not drowned.

The mystery of his malady deepened into the mystery of his death. Withthat his look of health and youth came back, and as she gazed upon hisgentle face, it wore to her the smile of quaint sweetness that she hadseen it wear the first night it won her fancy at Miss Milray's horse inFlorence.

Six years after Miss Milray parted with Clementina in Venice she foundherself, towards the close of the summer, at Middlemount. She haddefinitely ceased to live in Florence, where she had meant to die, andhad come home to close her eyes. She was in no haste to do this, and inthe meantime she was now at Middlemount with her brother, who hadexpressed a wish to revisit the place in memory of Mrs. Milray. It wasthe second anniversary of her divorce, which had remained, after amarried life of many vicissitudes, almost the only experience untried inthat relation, and which had been happily accomplished in the courts ofDacotah, upon grounds that satisfied the facile justice of that State.Milray had dealt handsomely with his widow, as he unresentfully calledher, and the money he assigned her was of a destiny perhaps as honored asits origin. She employed it in the negotiation of a second marriage, inwhich she redressed the balance of her first by taking a husband somewhatyounger than herself.

Both Milray and his sister had a wish which was much more than acuriosity to know what had become of Clementina; they had heard that herhusband was dead, and that she had come back to Middlemount; and MissMilray was going to the office, the afternoon following their arrival, toask the landlord about her, when she was arrested at the door of theball-room by a sight that she thought very pretty. At the bottom of theroom, clearly defined against the long windows behind her, stood thefigure of a lady in the middle of the floor. In rows on either side satlittle girls and little boys who left their places one after another, andturned at the door to make their manners to her. In response to eachobeisance the lady dropped a curtsey, now to this side, now to that,taking her skirt between her finger tips on either hand and spreading itdelicately, with a certain elegance of movement, and a grace that wasfull of poetry, and to Miss Milray, somehow, full of pathos. Thereremained to the end a small mite of a girl, who was the last to leave herplace and bow to the lady. She did not quit the room then, like theothers, but advanced toward the lady who came to meet her, and lifted herand clasped her to her breast with a kind of passion. She walked downtoward the door where Miss Milray stood, gently drifting over thepolished floor, as if still moved by the music that had ceased, and asshe drew near, Miss Milray gave a cry of joy, and ran upon her. "Why,Clementina!" she screamed, and caught her and the child both in her arms.

She began to weep, but Clementina smiled instead of weeping, as shealways used to do. She returned Miss Milray's affectionate greeting witha tenderness as great as her own, but with a sort of authority, such assometimes comes to those who have suffered. She quieted the older womanwith her own serenity, and met the torrent of her questions with as manyanswers as their rush permitted, when they were both presently in MissMilray's room talking in their old way. From time to time Miss Milraybroke from the talk to kiss the little girl, whom she declared to beClementina all over again, and then returned to her better behavior withan effect of shame for her want of self-control, as if Clementina's moodhad abashed her. Sometimes this was almost severe in its quiet; that washer mother coming to her share in her; but again she was like her father,full of the sunny gayety of self-forgetfulness, and then Miss Milraysaid, "Now you are the old Clementina!"

Upon the whole she listened with few interruptions to the story which sheexacted. It was mainly what we know. After her husband's deathClementina had gone back to his family for a time, and each year sinceshe had spent part of the winter with them; but it was very lonesome forher, and she began to be home-sick for Middlemount. They saw it andconsidered it. "They ah' the best people, Miss Milray!" she said, andher voice, which was firm when she spoke of her husband, broke in thewords of minor feeling. Besides being a little homesick, she ended, shewas not willing to live on there, doing nothing for herself, and so shehad come back.

"And you are here, doing just what you planned when you talked your lifeover with me in Venice!"

"Yes, but life isn't eva just what we plan it to be, Miss Milray."

"Ah, don't I know it!"

Clementina surprised Miss Milray by adding, "In a great many things--I don't know but in most--it's better. I don't complain of mine"--

"You poor child! You never complained of anything--not even of Mrs.Lander!"

"But it's different from what I expected; and it's--strange."

"Yes; life is very strange."

"I don't mean-losing him. That had to be. I can see, now, that it hadto be almost from the beginning. It seems to me that I knew it had to befrom the fust minute I saw him in New Yo'k; but he didn't, and I am gladof that. Except when he was getting wohse, he always believed he shouldget well; and he was getting well, when he"--

Miss Milray did not violate the pause she made with any question, thoughit was apparent that Clementina had something on her mind that she wishedto say, and could hardly say of herself.

She began again, "I was glad through everything that I could live withhim so long. If there is nothing moa, here or anywhe'a, that wassomething. But it is strange. Sometimes it doesn't seem as if it hadhappened."

"I think I can understand, Clementina."

"I feel sometimes as if I hadn't happened myself." She stopped, with apatient little sigh, and passed her hand across the child's forehead,in a mother's fashion, and smoothed her hair from it, bending over tolook down into her face. "We think she has her fatha's eyes," she said.

"Yes, she has," Miss Milray assented, noting the upward slant of thechild's eyes, which gave his quaintness to her beauty. "He hadfascinating eyes."

After a moment Clementina asked, "Do you believe that the looks are allthat ah' left?"

Miss Milray reflected. "I know what you mean. I should say characterwas left, and personality--somewhere."

"I used to feel as if it we'e left here, at fust--as if he must comeback. But that had to go."

"Yes."

"Everything seems to go. After a while even the loss of him seemed togo."

"Yes, losses go with the rest."

"That's what I mean by its seeming as if it never any of it happened.Some things before it are a great deal more real."

"Little things?"

"Not exactly. But things when I was very young." Miss Milray did notknow quite what she intended, but she knew that Clementina was feelingher way to something she wanted to say, and she let her alone. "When itwas all over, and I knew that as long as I lived he would be somewhereelse, I tried to be paht of the wo'ld I was left in. Do you think thatwas right?"

"It was wise; and, yes, it was best," said Miss Milray, and for relieffrom the tension which was beginning to tell upon her own nerves, sheasked, "I suppose you know about my poor brother? I'd better tell you tokeep you from asking for Mrs. Milray, though I don't know that it's sovery painful with him. There isn't any Mrs. Milray now," she added, andshe explained why.

Neither of them cared for Mrs. Milray, and they did not pretend to beconcerned about her, but Clementina said, vaguely, as if in recognitionof Mrs. Milray's latest experiment, "Do you believe in second marriages?"

Miss Milray laughed, "Well, not that kind exactly."

"No," Clementina assented, and she colored a little.

Miss Milray was moved to add, "But if you mean another kind, I don't seewhy not. My own mother was married twice."

"Was she?" Clementina looked relieved and encouraged, but she did not sayany more at once. Then she asked, "Do you know what ever became of Mr.Belsky?"

"Yes. He's taken his title again, and gone back to live in Russia; he'smade peace with the Czar; I believe."

"And is he there yet? But of course! He could never have given up beinga missionary."

"Well," said Clementina, "he isn't in China. His health gave out, andhe had to come home. He's in Middlemount Centa."

Miss Milray suppressed the "Oh!" that all but broke from her lips."Preaching to the heathen, there?" she temporized.

"To the summa folks," Clementina explained, innocent of satire. "Theyhave got a Union Chapel the'a, now, and Mr. Gregory has been preachingall summa." There seemed nothing more that Miss Milray could prompt herto say, but it was not quite with surprise that she heard Clementinacontinue, as if it were part of the explanation, and followed from thefact she had stated, "He wants me to marry him."

Miss Milray tried to emulate her calm in asking, "And shall you?"

"I don't know. I told him I would see; he only asked me last night. Itwould be kind of natural. He was the fust. You may think it isstrange"--

Miss Milray, in the superstition of her old-maidenhood concerning love,really thought it cold-blooded and shocking; but she said, "Oh, no."

Clementina resumed: "And he says that if it was right for me to stopcaring for him when I did, it is right now for me to ca'e for him again,where the'e's no one to be hu't by it. Do you think it is?"

"Yes; why not?" Miss Milray was forced to the admission against what shebelieved the finer feelings 'of her nature.

Clementina sighed, "I suppose he's right. I always thought he was good.Women don't seem to belong very much to themselves in this wo'ld, dothey?"

"No, they seem to belong to the men, either because they want the men, orthe men want them; it comes to the same thing. I suppose you don't wishme to advise you, my dear?"

"No. I presume it's something I've got to think out for myself."

"But I think he's good, too. I ought to say that much, for I didn'talways stand his friend with you. If Mr. Gregory has any fault it'sbeing too scrupulous."

"You mean, about that old trouble--our not believing just the same?"Miss Milray meant something much more temperamental than that, but sheallowed Clementina to limit her meaning, and Clementina went on."He's changed all round now. He thinks it's all in the life. He saysthat in China they couldn't understand what he believed, but they couldwhat he lived. And he knows I neva could be very religious."

It was in Miss Milray's heart to protest, "Clementina, I think you areone of the most religious persons I ever knew," but she forebore, becausethe praise seemed to her an invasion of Clementina's dignity. She merelysaid, "Well, I am glad he is one of those who grow more liberal as theygrow older. That is a good sign for your happiness. But I dare say it'smore of his happiness you think."

"Oh, I should like to be happy, too. There would be no sense in it if Iwasn't."

"No, certainly not."

"Miss Milray," said Clementina, with a kind of abruptness, "do you evahear anything from Dr. Welwright?"

"No! Why?" Miss Milray fastened her gaze vividly upon her.

"Oh, nothing. He wanted me to promise him, there in Venice, too."

"I didn't know it."

"Yes. But--I couldn't, then. And now--he's written to me. He wants meto let him come ova, and see me."

"And--and will you?" asked Miss Milray, rather breathlessly.

"I don't know. I don't know as I'd ought. I should like to see him, soas to be puffectly su'a. But if I let him come, and then didn't--Itwouldn't be right! I always felt as if I'd ought to have seen then thathe ca'ed for me, and stopped him; but I didn't. No, I didn't," sherepeated, nervously. "I respected him, and I liked him; but I neva"--She stopped, and then she asked, "What do you think I'd ought to do, MissMilray?"

Miss Milray hesitated. She was thinking superficially that she had neverheard Clementina say had ought, so much, if ever before. Interiorly shewas recurring to a sense of something like all this before, and to thefeeling which she had then that Clementina was really cold-blooded andself-seeking. But she remembered that in her former decision, Clementinahad finally acted from her heart and her conscience, and she rose fromher suspicion with a rebound. She dismissed as unworthy of Clementinaany theory which did not account for an ideal of scrupulous and unselfishjustice in her.

"That is something that nobody can say but yourself, Clementina," sheanswered, gravely.

"Yes," sighed Clementina, "I presume that is so."

She rose, and took her little girl from Miss Milray's knee. "Say good-bye," she bade, looking tenderly down at her.

Miss Milray expected the child to put up her lips to be kissed. But shelet go her mother's hand, took her tiny skirts between her finger-tips,and dropped a curtsey.

"You little witch!" cried Miss Milray. "I want a hug," and she crushedher to her breast, while the child twisted her face round and anxiouslyquestioned her mother's for her approval. "Tell her it's all right,Clementina!" cried Miss Milray. "When she's as old as you were inFlorence, I'm going to make you give her to me."

"Ah' you going back to Florence?" asked Clementina, provisionally.

"Oh, no! You can't go back to anything. That's what makes New York soimpossible. I think we shall go to Los Angeles."

XL.

On her way home Clementina met a man walking swiftly forward. A sort ofimpassioned abstraction expressed itself in his gait and bearing. Theyhad both entered the shadow of the deep pine woods that flanked the wayon either side, and the fallen needles helped with the velvety summerdust of the roadway to hush their steps from each other. She saw him faroff, but he was not aware of her till she was quite near him.

"Oh!" he said, with a start. "You filled my mind so full that I couldn'thave believed you were anywhere outside of it. I was coming to get you--I was coming to get my answer."

Gregory had grown distinctly older. Sickness and hardship had lefttraces in his wasted face, but the full beard he wore helped to give himan undue look of age.

"Oh, I'm not so sure of that," she said, with gentle perplexity, as shestood, holding the hand of her little girl, who stared shyly at theintense face of the man before her.

"I am," he retorted. "I have been thinking it all ever, Clementina.I've tried not to think selfishly about it, but I can't pretend that mywish isn't selfish. It is! I want you for myself, and because I'vealways wanted you, and not for any other reason. I never cared for anyone but you in the way I cared for you, and"--

"Oh!" she grieved. "I never ca'ed at all for you after I saw him."

"I know it must be shocking to you; I haven't told you with any wretchedhope that it would commend me to you!"

"I don't say it was so very bad," said Clementina, reflectively, "if itwas something you couldn't help."

"It was something I couldn't help. Perhaps I didn't try ."

"Did-she know it?"

"She knew it from the first; I told her before we were married."

Clementina drew back a little, insensibly pulling her child with her."I don't believe I exactly like it."

"I knew you wouldn't! If I could have thought you would, I hope Ishouldn't have wished--and feared--so much to tell you."

"Oh, I know you always wanted to do what you believed was right, Mr.Gregory," she answered. "But I haven't quite thought it out yet. Youmustn't hurry me."

"No, no! Heaven forbid." He stood aside to let her pass.

"I was just going home," she added.

"May I go with you?"

"Yes, if you want to. I don't know but you betta; we might as well;I want to talk with you. Don't you think it's something we ought to talkabout-sensibly?"

"Why, of course! And I shall try to be guided by you; I should alwayssubmit to be ruled by you, if"--

"That's not what I mean, exactly. I don't want to do the ruling. Youdon't undastand me."

"I'm afraid I don't," he assented, humbly.

"If you did, you wouldn't say that--so." He did not venture to make anyanswer, and they walked on without speaking, till she asked, "Did youknow that Miss Milray was at the Middlemount?"

"Miss Milray! Of Florence?"

"With her brother. I didn't see him; Mrs. Milray is not he'a; they ah'divo'ced. Miss Milray used to be very nice to me in Florence. She isn'tgoing back there any moa. She says you can't go back to anything.Do you think we can?"

She had left moments between her incoherent sentences where he mightinterrupt her if he would, but he waited for her question. "I hoped wemight; but perhaps"--

"No, no. We couldn't. We couldn't go back to that night when you threwthe slippas into the riva, no' to that time in Florence when we gave up,no' to that day in Venice when I had to tell you that I ca'ed moa fo'some one else. Don't you see?"

"Yes, I see," he said, in quick revulsion from the hope he had expressed."The past is full of the pain and shame of my errors!"

She stopped again, as if that were all, and he asked, "Then is that myanswer?"

"I don't believe that even in the otha wo'ld we shall want to go back tothe past, much, do you?" she pursued, thoughtfully.

Once Gregory would have answered confidently; he even now checked animpulse to do so. "I don't know," he owned, meekly.

"I do like you, Mr. Gregory!" she relented, as if touched by hismeekness, to the confession. "You know I do--moa than I ever expected tolike anybody again. But it's not because I used to like you, or becauseI think you always acted nicely. I think it was cruel of you, if youca'ed for me, to let me believe you didn't, afta that fust time. I can'teva think it wasn't, no matta why you did it."

"It was atrocious. I can see that now."

"I say it, because I shouldn't eva wish to say it again. I know that allthe time you we'e betta than what you did, and I blame myself a good dealmoa fo' not knowing when you came to Florence that I had begun to ca'efo'some one else. But I did wait till I could see you again, so as to besu'a which I ca'ed for the most. I tried to be fai'a, before I toldyou that I wanted to be free. That is all," she said, gently, andGregory perceived that the word was left definitely to him.

He could not take it till he had disciplined himself to acceptunmurmuringly his sentence as he understood it. "At any rate," he began,"I can thank you for rating my motive above my conduct."

"Oh," she said. "I don't think either of us acted very well. I didn'tknow till aftawa'ds that I was glad to have you give up, the way you didin Florence. I was--bewild'ed. But I ought to have known, and I wantyou to undastand everything, now. I don't ca'e for you because I used towhen I was almost a child, and I shouldn't want you to ca'e for me eitha,because you did then. That's why I wish you had neva felt that you hadalways ca'ed fo' me."

"Yes," said Gregory. He let fall his head in despair.

"That is what I mean," said Clementina. "If we ah' going to begintogetha, now, it's got to be as if we had neva begun before. And youmustn't think, or say, or look as if the'e had been anything in oua livesbut ouaselves. Will you? Do you promise?" She stopped, and put herhand on his breast, and pushed against it with a nervous vehemence.

"No!" he said. "I don't promise, for I couldn't keep my promise. Whatyou ask is impossible. The past is part of us; it can't be ignored anymore than it can be destroyed. If we take each other, it must be for allthat we have been as well as all that we are. If we haven't the couragefor that we must part."

He dropped the little one's hand which he had been holding, and moved afew steps aside. "Don't!" she said. "They'll think I've made you," andhe took the child's hand again.

They had emerged from the shadow of the woods, and come in sight of herfather's house. Claxon was standing coatless before the door in fullenjoyment of the late afternoon air; his wife beside him, at sight ofGregory, quelled a natural impulse to run round the corner of the housefrom the presence of strangers.

"I wonda what they'a sayin'," she fretted.

"It looks some as if she was sayin' yes," said Claxon, with an impersonalenjoyment of his conjecture. "I guess she saw he was bound not to takeno for an answa."

"I don't know as I should like it very much," his wife relucted."Clem's doin' very well, as it is. She no need to marry again."

"Oh, I guess it a'n't that altogetha. He's a good man." Claxon mused amoment upon the figures which had begun to advance again, with the littleone between them, and then gave way in a burst of paternal pride, "And Idon't know as I should blame him so very much for wantin' Clem. Shealways did want to be of moa use--But I guess she likes him too."

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Didn't reason about their beliefs, but only arguedDull, cold self-absorptionEverything seems to goGift of waiting for things to happenHe's so restingIt's the best that he doesn't seem prepared forLife alone is credible to the youngMorbid egotismMotives lie nearer the surface than most people commonly pretendOne time where one may choose safest what one likes bestOnly man I ever saw who would know how to break the fallReal artistocracy is above social prejudiceSingleness of a nature that was all poseSubmitted, as people always do with the trials of othersSunny gayety of self-forgetfulnessUnderstood when I've said something that doesn't mean anythingWe change whether we ought, or notWhen she's really sick, she's betterWilling that she should do herself a wrongWomen don't seem to belong very much to themselvesYou can't go back to anythingYou were not afraid, and you were not bold; you were just right

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS FOR THE ENTIRE RAGGED LADY:

All in all to each otherChained to the restless pursuit of an ideal not his ownComposed her features and her ideas to receive her visitorDidn't reason about their beliefs, but only arguedDull, cold self-absorptionEverything seems to goGift of waiting for things to happenGoing on of things had long ceased to bring pleasureHe a'n't a do-nothin'; he's a do-everythingHe's so restingHopeful apathy in his faceI'm moa used to havin' the things brought to meInexhaustible flow of statement, conjecture and misgivingIt's the best that he doesn't seem prepared forKept her talking vacuities when her heart was fullLed a life of public seclusionLife alone is credible to the youngLuxury of helplessnessMorbid egotismMotives lie nearer the surface than most people commonly pretendNew England necessity of blaming some oneNo object in life except to deprive it of all objectOne time where one may choose safest what one likes bestOnly man I ever saw who would know how to break the fallPerverse reluctance to find out where they wereProvisional reprehension of possible shiftlessnessReal artistocracy is above social prejudiceScant sleep of an elderly manSeldom talked, but there came times when he would'nt even listenSingleness of a nature that was all poseSubmitted, as people always do with the trials of othersSunny gayety of self-forgetfulnessThrown mainly upon the compassion of the chambermaidsTone was a snuffle expressive of deep-seated afflictionUnaware that she was a selfish or foolish personUnder a fire of conjecture and asseverationUnderstood when I've said something that doesn't mean anythingWe change whether we ought, or notWeak in his double lettersWhen she's really sick, she's betterWilling that she should do herself a wrongWishes of a mistress who did not know what she wantedWomen don't seem to belong very much to themselvesYou can't go back to anythingYou were not afraid, and you were not bold; you were just rightYou've got a light-haired voice

APRIL HOPES

1887

by William Dean Howells

From his place on the floor of the Hemenway Gymnasium Mr. Elbridge G.Mavering looked on at the Class Day gaiety with the advantage which hisstature, gave him over most people there. Hundreds of these were prettygirls, in a great variety of charming costumes, such as the eclecticismof modern fashion permits, and all sorts of ingenious compromises betweenwalking dress and ball dress. It struck him that the young men on whosearms they hung, in promenading around the long oval within the crowd ofstationary spectators, were very much younger than students used to be,whether they wore the dress-coats of the Seniors or the cut-away of theJuniors and Sophomores; and the young girls themselves did not look soold as he remembered them in his day. There vas a band playingsomewhere, and the galleries were well filled with spectators seated attheir ease, and intent on the party-coloured turmoil of the floor, wherefrom time to time the younger promenaders broke away from the ranks intoa waltz, and after some turns drifted back, smiling and controlling theirquick breath, and resumed their promenade. The place was intenselylight, in the candour of a summer day which had no reserves; and thebrilliancy was not broken by the simple decorations. Ropes of wildlaurel twisted up the pine posts of the aisles, and swung in festoonsoverhead; masses of tropical plants in pots were set along between theposts on one side of the room; and on the other were the lunch tables,where a great many people were standing about, eating chicken and salmonsalads, or strawberries and ice-cream, and drinking claret-cup. From thewhole rose that blended odour of viands, of flowers, of stuff's, oftoilet perfumes, which is the characteristic expression of, all socialfestivities, and which exhilarates or depresses--according as one is newor old to it.

Elbridge Mavering kept looking at the faces of the young men as if heexpected to see a certain one; then he turned his eyes patiently upon.the faces around him. He had been introduced to a good many persons, buthe had come to that time of life when an introduction; unless chargedwith some special interest, only adds the pain of doubt to the wearisomeencounter of unfamiliar people; and he had unconsciously put on theseverity of a man who finds himself without acquaintance where others aremeeting friends, when a small man, with a neatly trimmed reddish-greybeard and prominent eyes, stepped in front of him, and saluted him withthe "Hello, Mavering!" of a contemporary.

His face, after a moment of question, relaxed into joyful recognition."Why, John Munt! is that you?" he said, and he took into his large moistpalm the dry little hand of his friend, while they both broke out intothe incoherencies of people meeting after a long time. Mr. Maveringspoke in it voice soft yet firm, and with a certain thickness of tongue;which gave a boyish charm to his slow, utterance, and Mr. Munt used thesort of bronchial snuffle sometimes cultivated among us as a chest tone.But they were cut short in their intersecting questions and exclamationsby the presence of the lady who detached herself from Mr. Munt's arm asif to leave him the freer for his hand-shaking.

"Oh!" he said, suddenly recurring to her; "let me introduce you to Mrs.Pasmer, Mr. Mavering," and the latter made a bow that creased hiswaistcoat at about the height of Mrs. Pasmer's pretty little nose.

His waistcoat had the curve which waistcoats often describe at his age;and his heavy shoulders were thrown well back to balance this curve. Hiscoat hung carelessly open; the Panama hat in his hand suggested a certainhabitual informality of dress, but his smoothly shaven large handsomeface, with its jaws slowly ruminant upon nothing, intimated theconsequence of a man accustomed to supremacy in a subordinate place.

Mrs. Pasmer looked up to acknowledge the introduction with a sort ofpseudo-respectfulness which it would be hard otherwise to describe.Whether she divined or not that she was in the presence of a magnate ofsome sort, she was rather superfluously demure in the first two or threethings she said, and was all sympathy and interest in the meeting ofthese old friends. They declared that they had not seen each other fortwenty years, or, at any rate, not since '59. She listened while theydisputed about the exact date, and looked from time to time at Mr. Munt,as if for some explanation of Mr. Mavering; but Munt himself, when shesaw him last, had only just begun to commend himself to society, whichhad since so fully accepted him, and she had so suddenly, the momentbefore, found her self hand in glove with him that she might well haveappealed to a third person for some explanation of Munt. But she was nota woman to be troubled much by this momentary mystification, and she wasnot embarrassed at all when Munt said, as if it had all been pre-arranged, "Well, now, Mrs. Pasmer, if you'll let me leave you with Mr.Mavering a moment, I'll go off and bring that unnatural child to you; nouse dragging you round through this crowd longer."

He made a gesture intended, in the American manner, to be at once politeand jocose, and was gone, leaving Mrs. Pasmer a little surprised, and Mr.Mavering in some misgiving, which he tried to overcome pressing his jawstogether two or three times without speaking. She had no trouble ingetting in the first remark. "Isn't all this charming, Mr. Mavering?"She spoke in a deep low voice, with a caressing manner, and stood lookingup, at Mr. Mavering with one shoulder shrugged and the other drooped, anda tasteful composition of her fan and hands and handkerchief at herwaist.

"Yes, ma'am, it is," said Mr. Mavering. He seemed to say ma'am to herwith a public or official accent, which sent Mrs. Primer's mindfluttering forth to poise briefly at such conjectures as, "Congressmanfrom a country district? judge of the Common Pleas? bank president?railroad superintendent? leading physician in a large town?--no, Mr. Munt said Mister," and then to return to her pretty blue eyes,and to centre there in that pseudo-respectful attention under the arch ofher neat brows and her soberly crinkled grey-threaded brown hair and hervery appropriate bonnet. A bonnet, she said, was much more than half thebattle after forty, and it was now quite after forty with Mrs. Pasmer;but she was very well dressed otherwise. Mr. Mavering went on to say,with a deliberation that seemed an element of his unknown dignity,whatever it might be, "A number of the young fellows together can give amuch finer spread, and make more of the day, in a place like this, thanwe used to do in our rooms."

"Ah, then you're a Harvard man too!" said Mrs. Primer to herself, withsurprise, which she kept to herself, and she said to Mavering: "Oh yes,indeed! It's altogether better. Aren't they nice looking fellows?" shesaid, putting up her glass to look at the promenaders.

"Yes," Mr. Mavering assented. "I suppose," he added, out of theconsciousness of his own relation to the affair--"I suppose you've a sonsomewhere here?"

At this feat of Mrs. Pasmer's, Mr. Mavering looked at her with questionas to her precise intention, and ended by repeating, hopelessly, "Only adaughter?"

"Yes," said Mrs. Pasmer, with a sigh of the same irony, "only a poor,despised young girl, Mr. Mavering."

"You speak," said Mr. Mavering, beginning to catch on a little, "as if itwere a misfortune," and his, dignity broke up into a smile that had itsqueer fascination.

"Why, isn't it?" asked Mrs. Pasmer.

"Well, I shouldn't have thought so."

"Then you don't believe that all that old-fashioned chivalry and devotionhave gone out? You don't think the young men are all spoiled nowadays,and expect the young ladies to offer them attentions?"

"No," said Mr. Mavering slowly, as if recovering from the shock of thenovel ideas. "Do you?"

"Oh, I'm such a stranger in Boston--I've lived abroad so long--that Idon't know. One hears all kinds of things. But I'm so glad you're notone of those--pessimists!"

"Well," said Mr. Mavering, still thoughtfully, "I don't know that I canspeak by the card exactly. I can't say how it is now. I haven't been ata Class Day spread since my own Class Day; I haven't even been atCommencement more than once or twice. But in my time here we didn'texpect the young ladies to show us attentions; at any rate, we didn'twait for them to do it. We were very glad, to be asked to meet them,and we thought it an honour if the young ladies would let us talk ordance with them, or take them to picnics. I don't think that any of themcould complain of want of attention."

"Yes," said Mrs. Pasmer, "that's what I preached, that's what Iprophesied, when I brought my daughter home from Europe. I told her thata girl's life in America was one long triumph; but they say now thatgirls have more attention in London even than in Cambridge. One hearssuch dreadful things!"

"Like what?" asked Mr. Mavering, with the unserious interest which Mrs.Primer made most people feel in her talk.

"Oh; it's too vast a subject. But they tell you about charming girlsmoping the whole evening through at Boston parties, with no young men totalk with, and sitting from the beginning to the end of an assembly andnot going on the floor once. They say that unless a girl fairly throwsherself at the young men's heads she isn't noticed. It's this terribledisproportion of the sexes that's at the root of it, I suppose; itreverses everything. There aren't enough young men to go half round, andthey know it, and take advantage of it. I suppose it began in the war."

He laughed, and, "I should think," he said, laying hold of a single idea